Oliver Stone's 'Nuclear now' documentary.

[nctnico]

I have not seen it mentioned on this forum but Oliver Stone made a documentary called 'Nuclear Now' in 2022 outlining how and why nuclear energy can be helpfull to reduce carbon emissions. Now this is a typical Oliver Stone documentary with a somewhat one-sided view but there are many good points made (supported by numbers!) and it also highlights ongoing and new development. I found it interesting to watch.

[tatel]

I didn't watch it; but looking at their web promotion, see this:

"
With unprecedented access to the nuclear industry in France, Russia, and the United States, Nuclear Now explores the possibility for the global community to overcome the challenges of climate change and energy poverty to reach a brighter future through the power of nuclear energy.

Beneath our feet, Uranium atoms in the Earth’s crust hold incredibly concentrated energy. Science unlocked this energy in the mid-20th century, first for bombs and then to power submarines. The United States led the effort to generate electricity from this new source. Yet in the mid-20th century as societies began the transition to nuclear power and away from fossil fuels, a long-term PR campaign to scare the public began, funded in part by coal and oil interests. This campaign would sow fear about harmless low-level radiation and create confusion between nuclear weapons and nuclear energy. Looking squarely at the problem, Oliver Stone shows us that knowledge is the antidote to fear, and our human ingenuity will allow us to solve the climate change crisis if we use it.
"

I'm able to recall how the french dumped shiploads of barrels with concrete and nuclear waste in the Bay of Biscay near where our fishermen work. Can't heard anywhere about how they are going to clean it. They do not seem to appear here: www.nrc.gov/docs/ML0037/ML003768507.pdf  Go to page 29 of the document and read about  low level waste ocean disposal. They did it until 1983 and plan to do it again as soon as they are allowed. Did any of you watch "Chernobyl"? Because it's cheaper.

Not to mention how Japan is dumping radiactive shit from Fukushima right now. Technology to 100% clean any radioactive elements contaminating that water, existed in the U.S. at that time, but it was "expensive".  Not one but three reactors melted and reached underground water. There weren't any miners from Tula in Japan at tsunami time, it seems. The japanese weren't able neither to avoid it reaching underground water, nor to capture all the contaminated water, nor to 100% clean the water they captured. Now they  are dumping it into the ocean. Yet Chernobyl is officially still the biggest nuclear "accident". Bollocks.

Yeah, when there's the ability to dump, anywhere, great amounts of waste, that will remain highly toxic for 300 to some 250,000 years, one can get good profits. Being the energy that will save us from climatic change BTW. The icing in the cake, it isn't?

Climatic change is here. No jokes, where my mother lives, some 400 km east from here, 100 km south of Pyrenees range, about New York's latitude, there are now 6 months with temperatures more than 30ºC, with at least 2 months to live at near or above 40ºC. Year after year. It wasn't like that 25 years ago. Then usually were perhaps four months a year  at about 30ºC and fifteen days a year near 40ºC.

Not to speak about the drought. Hydro used to be by far the biggest "green" energy source, but was in 2023 below wind and sun at about 9%. Reservoirs are a grim view in most of Spain year after year.

Some kilometers from me, there's Spain's rainiest weather station. Rain was there over 3000 mm/year 30 years ago, near 3300 probably. Now it's about 2600. Having a heavy snow coat at 2000 meters high on the Pyrinean range is now the exception, not the rule.

I know climatics are studied by making averages over 30-year periods. Well, if the last 30-year change we experienced here, is to be setting trends, we are screwed. Others will follow quite soon. Remember how the rivers almost dried in Europe a couple years ago? France had to stop nuclear plants because there wasn't enough water for refrigeration.

Spain did achieve getting more than 50% renewable energy last year. IIRC, we aren't the only ones in the EU. Didn't bothered to search for a better link, sorry. But I passed it through Google translator for all of you: https://www-epe-es.translate.goog/es/activos/20231212/energias-renovables-espana-record-renovables-mitad-electricidad-95712251?_x_tr_sl=es&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=es&_x_tr_pto=wapp

So I don't buy what nuclear industry is trying to sneak into us. We don't need nor want nuclear energy here. Yes wind and sun have their problems but no waste from these will ever be radiactive. I think we need to reduce fossil fuels as much as possible and don't think nuclear is the solution, far from it.

Here a guy called Ryan got first kidnapped then killed. I don't endorse terrorism.  But I'm happy not having a nuclear power plant some 100 kms from me. Just saying.

https://es-m-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Mar%C3%ADa_Ryan?_x_tr_sl=es&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=es&_x_tr_pto=wapp

[Kleinstein]

The nuclear industry it trying hard to get back governmental support, as this is there life-line.  From the economic side nuclear makes no more sense. It is just to expensive and to slow to build, if one looks beyond the marketing promisses. We need to replace fossile energies fast, not in 30 or 50 years. So it does not help to start developing new reactors. They would be available in quantety just to late and it is by no means clear they could deliver on the promisses. The money would be better spend on builing the currently available renewable alternatives. They had there chance, but failed with lots of tax money spend.

It can be Ok to keep the limited number of existing reactor running, as long as they are safe. So I consider the stop of nuclear in Germany a mistake, but starting new nuclear, especially at large scale in other place would be another even larger mistake.

The new nuclear plans are full of BS promisses. A few of the nasty points to consider:
The Uranium supply is too limited to run conventional reactors one a large scale with once through fuel or just partial reprocessing as in France and the UK. The supply may be OK for the current level, but not much more to make a real difference for the climate.

The U - PU breading cycle with fast reactors  could have enough fuel, but is still not fully developed and reprocessing is dirty business and very expensive. So it is far from ready and economic. Safety of the fast reactors is also a bit more tricky. Reprocessing also comes with nuclear proliferation risks. There is also still the waste problem - less concentrated, but more volume and still bad enough to be a problem.

Thorium fuel needs even more reprocessing than the U-PU fast breaders. This is especially the case if the thorium is also recyced (which is really hard and currently set aside as it is way to expensive).
Most of the claims about thorium based reactors are big BS - maybe kind of correct if one takes one claim at a time. In the usual way of safe , cheap, clean,  available  - choose 2.

[nctnico]

The nuclear industry it trying hard to get back governmental support, as this is there life-line.  From the economic side nuclear makes no more sense. It is just to expensive and to slow to build, if one looks beyond the marketing promisses. We need to replace fossile energies fast, not in 30 or 50 years. So it does not help to start developing new reactors. They would be available in quantety just to late and it is by no means clear they could deliver on the promisses. The money would be better spend on builing the currently available renewable alternatives. They had there chance, but failed with lots of tax money spend.

It can be Ok to keep the limited number of existing reactor running, as long as they are safe. So I consider the stop of nuclear in Germany a mistake, but starting new nuclear, especially at large scale in other place would be another even larger mistake.

I don't think it is that black & white. China is building new nuclear power plants at a fast pace to reduce both pollution and CO2 emissions. China is more or less mass producing nuclear powerplants nowadays. https://www.iaea.org/bulletin/how-china-has-become-the-worlds-fastest-expanding-nuclear-power-producer The biggest hurdles of renewable energy are transport and storage. These problems are not solved sooner (more likely later) compared to building nuclear power plants (based on existing, proven technology). Sure renewables will catch up at some point but that will be far after 2050.

Economics are also debatable. The problems countries like China and India are facing is that burning coal is killing people by the thousands due to pollution. For this reason alone there is a big push in these countries to use whatever possible to generate electricity for as long as it isn't coal.

Again, I can really recommend watching the documentary; it looks at energy consumption and generation at a global scale and gives a good insight in the size & scale of the energy related challenges the world is facing in the next 50 years.

[Kleinstein]

The reactors that China is building are still conventional thermal, light water reactors and the pace is not really large   (5 going online in a year as a high-light) - that is maybe enough to replace old reactors going off line in other parts of the world. Replacing more than maybe 10% of world wide coal with such reactors would run into a problem with uranium resources relatively quick.

It is not just renewables , but large scale nuclear would also need storage solutions (for the excess power at night) and a plan B. The current safty concepts assume that the reactors could be shut down and upgraded / fixed if a serious problem is found. This mean 1 type of reactor can not provide reliable power - it needs a backup.

[jbb]

Nuclear is expensive to build. It’s usually over-budget and late.

Nuclear waste is an emotional and political issue. Nuclear waste fiascos such as the Sellafield site have occurred, and I believe some people should be in jail for it. However, how many people have died from ‘coal waste’ such as air pollution and will die from climate change-related destruction?

Large nuclear accidents are very rare but possible. However, how many people have died from coal mining accidents? It’s like air travel; a plane crash is Big News. Meanwhile, there’s a continuous background of car accidents permanently injuring or killing people and it barely makes the news. (My sympathies to anyone who’s lost friends or loved ones to accidents.)

A nuclear plant can generate heaps of electricity. Even in a ‘kalt dunkelflaute’ (“cold, dark, no wind”). Even in a dry year when rivers are low and hydroelectric generation is scaled back. As more people decarbonise their home heating, ie replace fossil fuel burners with heat pumps, we’ll need more power for cold winter nights. And it better be more reliable than ‘hope the wind blows somewhere.’

A nuclear plant is also an amazingly concentrated form of energy storage; I think they’re normally refuelled once a year. No other technology can store a year’s worth of generation. And if you’re really worried about security of supply, you could plausibly order next year’s fuel now and keep it on site.

I think the time is coming when we need to take a hard look at the risks of nuclear power versus the certain damage of fossil fuel generation versus the reliability risks of ‘more wind and solar.’

[nctnico]

Agreed, fear for radiation is largely between our ears. There are so many sources of radiation around us; especially from coal power plants and the gypsum that is made as a byproduct.

Burning coal kills millions of people each year due to the emissions. There really is no contest here; by counting number of deaths versus energy produced nuclear wins hands down. Even wind and solar are more deadly compared to nuclear energy. The WHO did an extensive study into this.

[tatel]

Do you call that "reasons"? Sorry I can't agree.

Millions of people die in war, so we could do anything and still there would be less dead than in just one war, it isn't?

Not even one answer to questions put over the table, like dumping radioactive shit into the ocean. Yeah, sweep it under he rug. Parrot some nuclear industry BS. Please feel free to build a nice echo chamber.

You know, it's moot anyway, we are producing twice those heaps of energy, with solar and wind, at a fraction of the price. Something that people like, say, you, thought it was impossible... because some pro-nuke guy told you so, it isn't. Meanwhile, drought is able to stop NPPs in France. You didn't answer that, either.

But, now I feel better. Just four people were killed here because they were building a nuclear power plant, that's nothing compared with the Charlies that die in accidents. Thank you for that.  Now I can clean my shotgun with peace of mind.

[jbb]

I think it’s legitimate to compare electricity generated by coal with electricity generated by nuclear.

Edit: by which I mean I think it’s legitimate to compare deaths from coal versus deaths from nuclear.

As it comes to terrible waste management, did I not say I think some people should be in prison?

[tatel]

I think it’s legitimate to compare electricity generated by coal with electricity generated by nuclear.

Edit: by which I mean I think it’s legitimate to compare deaths from coal versus deaths from nuclear.

As it comes to terrible waste management, did I not say I think some people should be in prison?

Well, acid rain wasn't a joke, either. In that I agree with you. But if you abandon carbon, you can expect that acid rain to vanish in about a decade, give or take? I had a carbon power plant some 4 kms from my home. So I know a couple things about carbon power plant waste.

But I think you forget that radioactive waste will remain radioactive for hundreds, thousands or even hundreds of thousands of years. That low level waste dumped into the ocean is supposedly containing "just" alpha and beta particles. I invite you to read about what a beta particle can do to your health if ingested.

The french dumped literally shiploads of steel barrels,   reinforced with concrete (inside). Now I live next to the ocean and got how much steel and concrete endure when exposed to salt water. Sellafield, that was fresh water, it was not? Now you know what we can expect. Some day, those barrels will fail and that waste will get out. Then we all will be in for a not-so-funny ride.

So, you should leave some space free into the accounting book for the people that still has to be exposed to what they dumped into the ocean for decades.  Not just the french. All the nuclear nations over the world did it and hope to do it again.

Conclusion: those pro-nuke grifters fooled us once. Shame on them. Should we allow them fool us again, shame on us.

[nctnico]

I think it’s legitimate to compare electricity generated by coal with electricity generated by nuclear.

Edit: by which I mean I think it’s legitimate to compare deaths from coal versus deaths from nuclear.

As it comes to terrible waste management, did I not say I think some people should be in prison?

Well, acid rain wasn't a joke, either. In that I agree with you. But if you abandon carbon, you can expect that acid rain to vanish in about a decade, give or take? I had a carbon power plant some 4 kms from my home. So I know a couple things about carbon power plant waste.

But I think you forget that radioactive waste will remain radioactive for hundreds, thousands or even hundreds of thousands of years.

Without quantification the word radioactive is useless. Everything around us is radioactive!
The reality is that nuclear waste decays to low levels of radiation quickly; within a timespan of 100 to 200 years. Not thousands! After 200 years it no longer poses a serious threat where it comes to radiation levels. Within 1000 to 10000 years, the radioactivity level is back at the original (natural!) level when the material was mined. However, a bigger problem is that besides the radiation, the material is also toxic and remains toxic. But the latter is true for many other materials we can't even destroy like asbestos, mercury or PFAS / PFOS. At some point you just have to consider waste a cost of keeping society going, deal with it the best way we can and most importantly of all: learn from mistakes from the past.

Yes, dumping the waste in sea was not a good idea at all. But nowadays the nuclear waste gets stored underground or on-site where control is much more effective. I much prefer living next to a nuclear power plant than a coal or gas power plant.

In the NL there is an operational nuclear power plant and a big steel mill (far apart from eachother). People living next to the steel mill get sick, those living next to the nuclear power plant do not.

[Someone]

The reality is that nuclear waste decays to low levels of radiation quickly; within a timespan of 100 to 200 years. Not thousands! After 200 years it no longer poses a serious threat where it comes to radiation levels.

Bullshit, out by orders of magnitude.

https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/489408/how-long-is-spent-nuclear-fuel-radioactive
Would you like a metic ton of uranium ore outside your house? Not even close to typical background levels.

I'm guess you're using some (as usual) unstated version of "low" in some contrived (and still unstated) circumstance.

[tatel]

Here's the quantification: "shiploads" times "decades" times "all over the world". I would like to be more specific but they never, ever, gave the numbers. French dumpings do not appear in US paper linked before, as I said.

More quantification:

Cesium-137 has a half-life of 30 years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesium-137

Iodine-131 is the most popular radionuclide. It has a half-life of just 8 days. But the cousin iodine-129 has a half-life of 15 million years:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotopes_of_iodine

IIRC, it's said that after 10 half-lives one could consider there's not a problem anymore. That gives us about three months for the iodine-131 and 300 years for cesium-137. For iodine-129 we are speaking about 150 milion years.

So let's take something about the middle. Plutonium is produced in nuclear power plants and it seems to be basically alfa-emitter, thus could easily be considered "low-level waste". Of course, since it's needed to make the bombs, most of it is carefully collected. But no process is perfect. So, again, it could easily be at least a tiiiiny little bit on each of these barrels, too. But there were "shiploads" x "decades" x "all over the world" of these barrels.

We can bet that non-economical-to-collect amounts of plutonium are effectively there. In that time France's NPPs were trying to do "very advanced things". Like, now we burn uranium, that will make plutonium, then we will burn plutonium, that will make garbanzonium... and so on and on. Nuclear energy was going to be "eternal" IIRC. So who knows exactly what that shit really is. Moreover, they dumped not just their own shit, more about that later.

You can't say there isn't any, either plutonium or garbanzonium, because neither you, nor me, know what's really on those barrels. It was "secret of the State" then and it's still secret now. All we know is: it's nuclear waste, supposedly "low level waste"

What we know for sure is plutonium-239 has a half-life of 24.000 years. Times ten=240.000 years. There weren't so many Homo Sapiens 240.000 years ago. Most cave paintings are from 10.000-15.000 years ago. Just to put things in perspective.

I think you should look again at your numbers. Please don't think I'm cherry-picking, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_decay

And: https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/plutonium.html

I also think you should really look at the chapter about low level waste ocean disposal I linked previously. You say:

"(...) nowadays the nuclear waste gets stored underground or on site were control is much more effective".

Sorry, but I have to say "Bollocks". And I have to say "Fukushima". Because they are dumping their shit into the ocean right now. Deliberately. Because it's cheaper. So, please think twice before parroting Westinghouse's bullshit. Stored underground? Please don't be naive.

Spain still has perhaps half a dozen nuclear reactors, and that waste goes now to France like it did 40 years ago. No underground storage in Spain. BTW, I'm not really sure the Netherlands have that underground storage, either. France dumped nuclear waste from all Western Europe from the 1960s up until 1983. Because it's cheaper. So, not really much underground storage in most of Western Europe. Or at least it so seems. Perhaps Finland? But, they are just 5 million people. There's more people in Barcelona than in Finland, I would say. So those nice suomis can do with a fraction of the energy other countries need= an easier problem  to solve.

Should the number of NPPs increase, that hyped and so often ficticional underground storage would be quickly overwhelmed. To build these things is not easy, nor fast, nor cheap, to stand up for more time than the pyramids, avoiding leaks by the way. So, as the US paper about ocean disposal states, more ocean disposal will be the "solution". French government didn't cease to authorize dumpings because they were nice guys, but because they were compelled. Now the matter for the nuclear industry is consider we all live in Nemo mode to try and be allowed to do it again. Because it's cheaper. Unfortunately it looks many many  people is really Nemo-alike. Politicians know it well.

If you prefer to live near a NPP, please feel free to do so. So what? Like half a million people living in Bilbo didn't think the same. And there was Altos Hornos de Bizkaia there at that time. In company of Babcock-Wilcox and a whole lot of steel heavy industries.  Don't think this is like all of Spain, olives and wine and flamenco, as you guiris usually think. We have the biggest part of Spain's heavy industries here. In Franco's time industries were allowed to dump anything into the ground, into the water and into the air. So we know well all types of shitty industrial waste here. Yet we prefer non-radioactive shitty waste. Or even better: no shitty waste at all.

So, you can give me your opinion and I can give you the opinion of 2.5 million basques. That guy Ryan? At least he's remembered. The other three? Sic transit gloria mundi.

Those living next to the nuclear power plant do not get sick? Ask the people from Fukushima. BTW, try to calculate what percent of your country would become inhabitable, for how many time, should that reactor go bonkers. Lets say you are right and problem is solved just by waiting 200 years to get back home. No doubt that would be really an incredibly good bargain. Just saying. Not to mention what it would do to the economy of the country.

Nico, I usually listen what you say with a maximum of attention, but I have to say, now your tires are slipping.

[Someone]

IIRC, it's said that after 10 half-lives one could consider there's not a problem anymore.

That is equally misleading and not just a wild simplification but misses the point.

People care about their (statistical) exposure to harm, there is a well used measure for this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sievert
to get there from a waste stream you need the activity:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Becquerel
multiplied by the pathway of exposure, and weighting for both exposure method and energy spectrum

This is done for coal power as a comparison:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S096980431300273X

What we dont get is lifecycle numbers for nuclear. The generating plant is relatively benign and inoffensive compared to the mining, reprocessing, and waste (where water contamination pathways into shared/perpetual sources is scary).

[Kleinstein]

I think it’s legitimate to compare electricity generated by coal with electricity generated by nuclear.

Edit: by which I mean I think it’s legitimate to compare deaths from coal versus deaths from nuclear.

The point with the deaths is that they are kind of statistical from polution and from accidents. So neither the numbers for coal no nuclear are easy and free of controversy.
With nuclear one point is that the waste problem is one that can hit us in the future - it is just hard to guess how good the disposal will work in 1000 years. Ideally everything would be fine, but when for some reason (e.g. a pandemic, war or other global desaster) the power-plants are just abandoned, chances are the waste problem would hit future generation hard.

The comparison to coal is also a bit misleading now. We hopefully agree that coal is bad and not an option for the future.  Nobody should build a new coal power plant anymore. The alternatives are more the renewables and maybe natural gas (for a transition period).

In some respect it looks like proposed new and better nuclear power is used as an excuse to keep the old coal power plans running longer and slow down the replacement with remewable sources.
We really need to seriously start with stopping the use of coal fast. If it really gets faster this way one may also build a few nuclear plants, but I don't see them making a big difference and for new designs there is just not enough time around with a rather uncertain outcome and high upfront costs.
Chances are the energy will get more expensive.  Coal burned today is not much better than coal burned in 20 years. So why not start charging it with the environmental costs now - the economy needs the cost pressure to really let go. It kind of has to hurt.

[nctnico]

The reality is that nuclear waste decays to low levels of radiation quickly; within a timespan of 100 to 200 years. Not thousands! After 200 years it no longer poses a serious threat where it comes to radiation levels.

Bullshit, out by orders of magnitude.

https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/489408/how-long-is-spent-nuclear-fuel-radioactive
Would you like a metic ton of uranium ore outside your house? Not even close to typical background levels.

I'm guess you're using some (as usual) unstated version of "low" in some contrived (and still unstated) circumstance.

The link you provided underlines exactly what I wrote. Note the horizontal line which marks the 'Uranium ore level equavalent' in the graph.

Some info about uranium mining and safety precautions:
https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-security/radiation-and-health/occupational-safety-in-uranium-mining.aspx

[nctnico]

The point with the deaths is that they are kind of statistical from polution and from accidents. So neither the numbers for coal no nuclear are easy and free of controversy.
With nuclear one point is that the waste problem is one that can hit us in the future - it is just hard to guess how good the disposal will work in 1000 years. Ideally everything would be fine, but when for some reason (e.g. a pandemic, war or other global desaster) the power-plants are just abandoned, chances are the waste problem would hit future generation hard.

Still you can argue that it looks like the waste problem from burning fossil fuels IS going to hit future generations hard for sure due to global warming (and nitrogen deposits). And thinking about it, it occured to me that I have not brought up the following question for myself: how long is it going to take for global warming to go away (IOW: CO2 levels decreasing and global temperature dropping)? Maybe there is a simple answer to that but I can't recall reading anything about it or somebody bringing it up.

In some respect it looks like proposed new and better nuclear power is used as an excuse to keep the old coal power plans running longer and slow down the replacement with remewable
sources.
We really need to seriously start with stopping the use of coal fast. If it really gets faster this way one may also build a few nuclear plants, but I don't see them making a big difference and for new designs there is just not enough time around with a rather uncertain outcome and high upfront costs.
Chances are the energy will get more expensive.  Coal burned today is not much better than coal burned in 20 years. So why not start charging it with the environmental costs now - the economy needs the cost pressure to really let go. It kind of has to hurt.

I agree with phasing out coal. But I disagree with it needing to hurt financially. The main problem with artificially increasing costs (this is the usual methode) is that it is going to hurt the people who have the least to spend the most -by far-.

In reality renewables are still at an infancy stage. Large scale storage will not be solved / scaled up sufficiently within the next 20 years. And how are countries like China and India going to switch to renewables with all their heavy industry (that got booted out of the US and Europe)? So when countries like China or India bring up a working nuclear powerplant in 5 years which replaces a coal power plant, that is a win in my book. Especially since these countries are the factories of (for) the world.

In the end you need to choose the least bad solution.

[Someone]

The reality is that nuclear waste decays to low levels of radiation quickly; within a timespan of 100 to 200 years. Not thousands! After 200 years it no longer poses a serious threat where it comes to radiation levels.

Bullshit, out by orders of magnitude.

https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/489408/how-long-is-spent-nuclear-fuel-radioactive
Would you like a metic ton of uranium ore outside your house? Not even close to typical background levels.

I'm guess you're using some (as usual) unstated version of "low" in some contrived (and still unstated) circumstance.

The link you provided underlines exactly what I wrote. Note the horizontal line which marks the 'Uranium ore level equavalent' in the graph.

lol, sticking to your (blind) guns and bluster.

So I've added a line to point out where (that particular waste) drops through the activity of uranium ore. THOUSANDS OF YEARS. Further, as above that's the raw activity in events (Bq) but the more damaging and biologically absorbed Cs and Sr isotopes multiply the weightings compared to Uranium ore.

Uranium ore is not some benign benchmark, it is far above average background radiation which is why workers exposed industrially to it take many precautions and are monitored constantly. Yes, the simple solution is to vitrify nuclear waste and return it to where the ore was extracted.... except for those pesky liquid extraction processes.

[Kleinstein]

Getting down to the Uranium ore equivalent is by far not saying that the material is safe after this. Uranium ores can also be quite different - not all are the same and they are also considered prolematic material, that should be keept in a safe place (geologic barrier) and not spread around.
The horizontal line is just in a sweep spot where it looks like the time is not too long to blow the mind. Shift that line lower by 1 or 2 decades and it takes 100s of thouthands or millions of years.

Comparing the line to the contribution of PU would suggest that the PU would not be an issue at all. So I don't think that horizontal line is a good choice. So 5 TBQ still looks like an awfull stron source that would need quite some permits and training to handle, even only a small fraction of that.


For the excess CO2 the current estimate is that it takes some 28000 years to get absorbed back by faster plant growth. However this number may go up for higher levels of CO2 as there can be saturation.

China is already building and installing a lot of new PV  (some 216 GW) and wind power, way more than the few nuclear plants  (maybe 5 GW) they are also building. It is just cheaper to build PV than nuclear.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/chinas-installed-solar-power-capacity-rises-552-2023-2024-01-26/

[.RC.]

At the end of the day for most countries it is going to be nuclear or candles.

You could not run a normal non special first world country on solar and wind and battery storage and expect to maintain the standard of living the citizens currently enjoy.  Whenever you bring it up on internet forums, someone will straight away point to some unusual country that might have large amounts of hydro and a small population and claim that proves everything.

I am yet to come across just the wind, solar and battery capacity required to run a normal run of the mill country fully on renewables.  I was reading earlier some story about some new solar farm.  The article only gave the nameplate capacity then said it could power so many tends of thousands of homes.   They did not say for how long or anything.  Or how many aluminium smelters the facility could run.  It is always so many houses and never for how long it could run so many houses.

Nuclear will be the future.

[nctnico]

Getting down to the Uranium ore equivalent is by far not saying that the material is safe after this. Uranium ores can also be quite different - not all are the same and they are also considered prolematic material, that should be keept in a safe place (geologic barrier) and not spread around.
The horizontal line is just in a sweep spot where it looks like the time is not too long to blow the mind.

As I wrote before, the material itself is toxic forever. But the radiation levels go down from 'lethal within seconds' to 'harmfull after prolonged exposure'. IOW, if people happen to stumble upon nuclear waste after -say 2000 years- and move away from it, it very likely won't harm them in any way. Now some will likely come up with all kinds of doom-scenarios where information about the sites gets lost. But humanity has a pretty good track record of recovering information. Look at how much information we were able to recover about how people lived thousands of years ago (like the Egyptians and Romans).

China is already building and installing a lot of new PV  (some 216 GW) and wind power, way more than the few nuclear plants  (maybe 5 GW) they are also building. It is just cheaper to build PV than nuclear.

I'm afraid the latter is only true if you don't include storage costs. The problem however with solar and wind is that they don't work as a one on one replacement for fossil fuels and/or nuclear without seasonal storage. Renewables are really at an infancy state where we are only starting to get the generation part on the rails. Getting large scale seasonal storage developed and installed is at the very least 20 years away. Right now (seasonal) storage is pie in the sky like nuclear fusion. A lot of development needs to be done.

[Nominal Animal]

Do not forget that burning coal releases more radioactive particles ("radiation") than nuclear power plants, tests, bombs, and accidents combined.

For a layman article about radioactivity in coal ash, see this (Scientific American; by a science journalist, not a nuclear energy proponent).

If we compare coal power plants to nuclear power plants producing the same amount of electricity, the coal power plant produces about ten times as much radioactive waste as the nuclear power plant.

I for one prefer solar and wind energy, but for industry and stability, we need bulk energy production for which currently nuclear is the safest and least polluting option.  At least here in Finland, we're doing something about the spent fuel.  The permanent storage facility, Onkalo, is almost ready for use.  It is designed to last 100,000 years and an ice age.

[woody]

 
<rant>
Nuclear Now?  More like Nuclear in 15 years. As that seems to be the time it takes to build a reactor. And that can only happen if I am willing to pay astonishing amounts of money per MWh. Which I am not. But alas, then some government will happily supplement the difference between what you can reasonably get for a MWh on the market and what that MWh will cost when Hinkley C generated it. For of course, the invisible hand of the market is not allowed to touch nuclear reactors. So in the end I still pay.

Oh, and when we are lucky and these reactors reach their designed end-of-life without mayor problems (usually postponed at least a couple of times, like in Belgium, how's that for safety?) they are moved around as hot potatoes until they end up at, guess where, the government. Who then are responsible for taking them apart. As we right now, see in the Netherlands. With, again, my money.

I am not principally against nuclear power. We certainly must keep researching it and fund that research, for who knows, maybe one day someone will find a way to create a safe, working fusion reactor that runs on seawater. At the same time I see more in learning to harness the gigantic amount of energy that falls on our planet each and every day. For we would be really stupid not to use that as fully as possible.

And if in the mean time aluminum smelters or fertilizer factories or hydrogen generating plants need astonishing amounts of electricity at the drop of a hat, let them invest in their own nuclear power plant. Stop asking society to absorb the brunt of the costs but pencil these in in the price of your product and see for yourself how feasible nuclear powered electricity really is.
</rant>

[tatel]

IIRC, it's said that after 10 half-lives one could consider there's not a problem anymore.

That is equally misleading and not just a wild simplification but misses the point.

People care about their (statistical) exposure to harm, there is a well used measure for this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sievert
to get there from a waste stream you need the activity:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Becquerel
multiplied by the pathway of exposure, and weighting for both exposure method and energy spectrum

This is done for coal power as a comparison:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S096980431300273X

What we dont get is lifecycle numbers for nuclear. The generating plant is relatively benign and inoffensive compared to the mining, reprocessing, and waste (where water contamination pathways into shared/perpetual sources is scary).

Yeah, of course one has either to simplify or wrote a textbook. I'm not a nuclear engineer BTW. And I think that post was more than long enough.

But also think it makes clear that hyped "underground safe storage" is bullshit, and that we are no just speaking about "just less than a hundred years".

These dumped barrels will for sure fail before the shit inside them becomes safe. We haven't been exposed to their waste yet, but will be eventually. The entities that did it will not be there to be hold accountable, however. That's why they think they could be able to get away with it again. Actually they are getting away with it right now in Fukushima.

[Kleinstein]

Even if we pay the high price for nuclear reactors in the way they were build the last decades this will not really solve the energy problem. With conventional reactors there is just not enough Uranium available to replace the current coal consumption for more than a few years. So if we switch magically to 50% nuclear, the reasonable uranium reserves are gone by maybe 2030 or 2040.
The currently availabe reactors are only short time or small contribution at best.

So if at all one would have to look at the fast breeders, and these are really in there infancy and largey failed so far. The fast breaders would need less uranium and could absorb the rather high costs for uranium from see water. So they would have way more reserves available. With conventional reactors the uranium from see water would be too expensive / energy intensive to be practical.

Large scale nuclear would also need storage, as nuclear runs 24/7 to get reasonable costs and lifetime (powering down at night would be extra stress to the plants).

It can make sense to combine some nuclear with largely renewables, so that nuclear could provide some base load and reduce the need for storage. It is generally good to have a mix and not all from one source, as the supply can vary.